


By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

by JoJo



Category: Planet of the Apes (TV)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24560569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: Hooch as a truth teller.
Relationships: Pete Burke/Alan Virdon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Small Fandoms Fest





	By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

The stuff is as clear as moonlight, and made of turnips.

It’s in a quart jar with a bung.

This gift comes with the compliments of the village’s head honcho. He offered them a share of a hog roast and a place to stay, too – payment for a mended well shaft. Galen’s general lack of aggression had also been popular.

Burke holds the jar up, peers in as if looking for a goldfish. Then he settles it in the crook of his arm again, joins his friends in looking round their quarters.

Set at the far reaches of the village, it’s not much to speak of. A square hut, unswept wooden floor, one half-shuttered window. It smells of grain and chickens. There’s no table, no stools, no cupboards. Just four bare cots, two pushed together against the far wall, one against the left wall, one against the right. 

A pile of moth-eaten blankets sits on the left hand one.

“You get the master suite, Colonel,” Burke says to Virdon, head jerking at the double cot.

Virdon seems weary of the ‘Colonel’ joke. He twitches in exasperation. “Galen, you’re welcome to it if you want.” 

But Galen wags his head, puts his pack down on the right hand cot. He rubs his muzzle.

Shrugging, Virdon throws his pack across to the double cot.

*

There are no candles, and no lamp. It will be dark in about an hour.

For a while they sit on their respective cots, agree they’re bushed, that the villagers have been kind, that the hog was a meager, greasy, beast.

Eventually Burke doles out the blankets. Then he hoists the jar off the floor on to his lap. Pinging the glass with a fingernail, he meets Virdon’s clear-sky gaze over the bung.

“Well?”

“We should at least try it,” Virdon says, face deadpan.

Burke gives him a solemn nod. “It would be churlish not to.”

“Human moonshine is notoriously weak,” Galen says, a touch pompous. “It wouldn’t intoxicate a flea.”

The implication that an ape-made version would knock their puny socks off is strong.

Burke gives him a look, a pixie spark lighting his dark eyes. 

*

Fleas aside, apparently turnip hooch acts to magnify tendencies that are already present in its puny human hosts. It’s not altogether clear how that works with Galen.

In the absence of any receptacles they take turns passing the jar around. This feels brotherly and collegiate, even though Virdon of course has a thing about germs. They know in this moment that they have no better friends, no more trustworthy companions, than each other. 

On the first two rounds they make toasts – to the village chief, to Jonesy, to Farrow, to Galen’s parents, to anyone who’s helped them, to the everlasting and incapacitating indigestion of General Urko.

With Virdon it takes a while, but inexorably, with each new swig, he descends through various levels of maudlin into bleak. By the time they’re near the bottom of the jar he’s in the basement. The stuff they’re drinking apparently offers new insight into the hopelessness of their situation. He sits on the double cot with his head hung, a picture of despair.

“No, no, leave him,” Burke keeps saying to Galen, grappling at him, uncoordinated.

For his part the liquor acts fast, like nitrous oxide. He hugs his friends, whether they welcome it or not, generally behaves like an eight year old, finds himself and them completely hilarious.

Once the jar is empty, Galen, who’d insisted on striding bullishly up and down the hut to show off how steady he is, becomes still. And then miserably sick. He bangs open the shutter, heaves over the sill, begins to groan quietly. After multiple evacuations of hog roast, he staggers straight for his cot and rolls on to it, one hand over his head.

“You, my friend,” Burke says, weaving towards him with a little snicker, “should drink some water.”

Galen flaps at him to go away.

Virdon snarls something at Burke that sounds pointed, but they’re not sure what – in particular – has angered him. Nevertheless it’s Virdon, muttering blackly, who tucks a blanket around the chimpanzee, pats at one miserably rounded shoulder.

As darkness descends, affairs unroll as they were bound to.

*

In the morning, Galen wakes first.

He sits up, cautious, knuckles his eyes. 

His throat is scratchy, but the nausea has gone. In its place, something flutters in his gut, an untethered thought, a worry he can’t name.

Giving the still-open shutter a disdainful look, Galen stares around the hut.

The jar, empty, is on its side in the middle of the floor. Opposite him Burke sprawls on his cot, limbs akimbo, like a starfish. To the right, blankets abandoned, Virdon is curled into the wall. 

Overlaying the grain and chickens, the hut now smells of liquor, of strange dreams. It smells, to his sensitive muzzle, of heated human skin. Galen huffs. The three of them really ought to get on the road.

He pops to his feet, delivers a kick to Burke’s cot, a thump to Virdon’s. 

“I don’t know about breakfast,” he twitters at them. He's nervous, although he can’t think why.

There's a succession of groans and curses. So breathtakingly stoic at times, so willing to endure hardship, humans can be remarkable babies. To Galen's mind, anyway.

“Dear God,” Virdon says. He’s rolled over and levers himself up against the wall, massaging his forehead with a fist. His face is pasty and his hair sticks up, sweaty clumps of straw-blond.

Burke remains for the moment on his back, one long arm flung out. “Notoriously weak, you said,” he intones in a phlegmy rasp. “Wouldn’t intoxicate a flea, you said.”

“Please,” Virdon begs. “Stop talking.”

Burke struggles to his elbows, ignoring him. “Did anything bad happen?” he asks, “I mean, apart from Galen spewing? Because I can’t remember.”

“There were the jokes.” Virdon is dry.

“Huh.”

Galen tuts. Really he doesn't want to revisit last night. He can’t deny he remembers the spewing and the jokes. Not to mention Virdon declaring that they might as well turn themselves in to General Urko's troops right now and be done with it, because what the hell. 

What he might deny is waking out of a unsettled sleep at some point, opening his eyes on pale moonlight. 

He might just deny that.

Hearing Alan’s growled “you’re stinking goddamned drunk, Major Burke.”

Pete, spooned around their leader in the double cot, snorting with suppressed glee. 

Bare flanks. Legs entwined. Mouths together.

The strangely desolate noises Alan made. 

“I’ll go and find some sustenance,” Galen says, shaking his head against the strangeness. For the first time since he got to his feet the room has whirled around him. “Since you’re both in such a... bad way.”

“You feeling all right, Galen?” Burke is unusually quiet and serious.

“Better than you,” he replies smartly, and Burke gives him a little smile.

When he gets back with fresh bread and water, Galen’s feeling a lot more ape. With the help of daylight and the open air he’s remembered that all that moonlight stuff was just a dream. Because it's fading away now, just as dreams do, even the oddest ones. To his scientific mind it seems very likely that turnips have that delusional effect, especially when brewed with barley and yeast.

Burke and Virdon are packed up and ready to go. They’re standing together by the double cot.

Both of them start as he comes through the door. Virdon scrubs at his bristly jaw, and Burke rubs a thumb pad across his bottom lip.

Galen knows he's just missed something. As ever with these two, it's not yet clear to him if it's important.

They blink at him, those eyes of theirs wide, innocent as lambs. 

-ends-


End file.
